The Story of the Mahābhārata

The innermost narrative kernel of the Mahābhārata tells the story of two sets of
paternal first cousins—the five sons of the deceased king Pāṇḍu [pronounced PAAN-
doo] (the five Pāṇḍavas [said as PAAN-da-va-s]) and the one hundred sons of blind
King Dhṛtarāṣṭra [Dhri-ta-RAASH-tra] (the 100 hundred Dhārtarāṣṭras [Dhaar-ta-
RAASH-tras])—who became bitter rivals, and opposed each other in war for
possession of the ancestral Bharata [BHAR-a-ta] kingdom with its capital in the "City
of the Elephant," Hāstinapura [HAAS-ti-na-pu-ra], on the Gaṅgā river in north central
India. What is dramatically interesting within this simple opposition is the large
number of individual agendas the many characters pursue, and the numerous personal
conflicts, ethical puzzles, subplots, and plot twists that give the story a strikingly
powerful development.

The five sons of Pāṇḍu were actually fathered by five Gods (sex was mortally
dangerous for Pāṇḍu, because of a curse) and these heroes were assisted throughout
the story by various Gods, seers, and brahmins, including the seer Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana
Vyāsa [VYAA-sa] (who later became the author of the epic poem telling the whole of
this story), who was also their actual grandfather (he had engendered Pāṇḍu and the
blind Dhṛtarāṣṭra upon their nominal father's widows in order to preserve the lineage).
The one hundred Dhārtarāṣṭras, on the other hand, had a grotesque, demonic birth, and
are said more than once in the text to be human incarnations of the demons who are
the perpetual enemies of the Gods. The most dramatic figure of the
entire Mahābhārata, however, is Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva of the tribe of Andhaka
Vṛṣṇis, located in the city of Dvārakā in the far west, near the ocean. His name is, thus
Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva [Vaa-su-DAY-va]. But he also a human instantiation of the supreme
God Vāsudeva-Nārāyaṇa-Viṣṇu descended to earth in human form to rescue Law,
Good Deeds, Right, Virtue and Justice (all of these words refer to different facets
of "dharma," the “firm-holding” between the ethical quality of an action and the
quality of its future fruits for the doer). Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva was also a cousin to both
Bhārata phratries, but he was a friend and advisor to the Pāṇḍavas, became the
brother-in-law of Arjuna [AR-ju-na] Pāṇḍava, and served as Arjuna's mentor and
charioteer in the great war. Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva is portrayed several times as eager to see
the purgative war occur, and in many ways the Pāṇḍavas were his human instruments
for fulfilling that end.

The Dhārtarāṣṭra party behaved viciously and brutally toward the Pāṇḍavas in many
ways, from the time of their early youth onward. Their malice displayed itself most
dramatically when they took advantage of the eldest Pāṇḍava, Yudhiṣṭhira [Yu-
DHISH-thir-a] (who had by now become the universal ruler of the land) in a game of
dice: The Dhārtarāṣṭras 'won' all his brothers, himself, and even the Pāṇḍavas'
common wife Draupadī [DRAO-pa-dee] (who was an incarnation of the richness and
productivity of the Goddess "Earthly-and-Royal Splendor," Śrī [Shree]); they
humiliated all the Pāṇḍavas and physically abused Draupadī; they drove the Pāṇḍava
party into the wilderness for twelve years, and the twelve years had to be followed by
the Pāṇḍavas' living somewhere in society, in disguise, without being discovered, for
one more year.

The Pāṇḍavas fulfilled their part of that bargain, but the villainous leader of the
Dhārtarāṣṭra party, Duryodhana [Dur-YODH-ana], was unwilling to restore the
Pāṇḍavas to their half of the kingdom when the thirteen years had expired. Both sides
then called upon their many allies and two large armies arrayed themselves on 'Kuru's
Field' (Kuru was one of the eponymous ancestors of the clan), eleven divisions in the
army of Duryodhana against seven divisions for Yudhiṣṭhira. Much of the action in
the Mahābhārata is accompanied by discussion and debate among various interested
parties, and the most famous sermon of all time, Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva's ethical lecture
accompanied by a demonstration of his divinity to his charge Arjuna (the justly
famous Bhagavad Gītā [BHU-gu-vud GEE-taa]) occurred in the Mahābhārata just
prior to the commencement of the hostilities of the war. Several of the important
ethical and theological themes of the Mahābhārata are tied together in this sermon,
and this "Song of the Blessed One" has exerted much the same sort of powerful and
far-reaching influence in Indian Civilization that the New Testament has in
Christendom. The Pāṇḍavas won the eighteen day battle, but it was a victory that
deeply troubled all except those who were able to understand things on the divine
level (chiefly Kṛṣṇa, Vyāsa, and Bhīṣma [BHEESH-ma], the Bharata patriarch who
was emblematic of the virtues of the era now passing away). The Pāṇḍavas' five sons
by Draupadī, as well as Bhīmasena [BHEE-ma-SAY-na] Pāṇḍava's and Arjuna
Pāṇḍava's two sons by two other mothers (respectively, the young warriors
Ghaṭotkaca [Ghat-OT-ka-cha] and Abhimanyu [Uh-bhi-MUN-you ("mun" rhymes
with "nun")]), were all tragic victims in the war. Worse perhaps, the Pāṇḍava victory
was won by the Pāṇḍavas slaying, in succession, four men who were quasi-fathers to
them: Bhīṣma, their teacher Droṇa [DROE-na], Karṇa [KAR-na] (who was, though
none of the Pāṇḍavas knew it, the first born, pre-marital, son of their mother), and
their maternal uncle Śalya (all four of these men were, in succession, 'supreme
commander' of Duryodhana's army during the war). Equally troubling was the fact
that the killing of the first three of these 'fathers,' and of some other enemy warriors as
well, was accomplished only through 'crooked stratagems' (jihmopāyas), most of
which were suggested by Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva as absolutely required by the
circumstances.

The ethical gaps were not resolved to anyone's satisfaction on the surface of the
narrative and the aftermath of the war was dominated by a sense of horror and
malaise. Yudhiṣṭhira alone was terribly troubled, but his sense of the war's
wrongfulness persisted to the end of the text, in spite of the fact that everyone else,
from his wife to Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, told him the war was right and good; in spite of the
fact that the dying patriarch Bhīṣma lectured him at length on all aspects of the Good
Law (the Duties and Responsibilities of Kings, which have rightful violence at their
center; the ambiguities of Righteousness in abnormal circumstances; and the absolute
perspective of a beatitude that ultimately transcends the oppositions of good versus
bad, right versus wrong, pleasant versus unpleasant, etc.); in spite of the fact that he
performed a grand Horse Sacrifice as expiation for the putative wrong of the war.
These debates and instructions and the account of this Horse Sacrifice are told at some
length after the massive and grotesque narrative of the battle; they form a deliberate
tale of pacification (praśamana, śānti) that aims to neutralize the inevitable miasma of
the war.

In the years that follow the war Dhṛtarāṣṭra and his queen Gāndhārī [Gaan-DHAAR-
ee], and Kuntī [Koon-tee], the mother of the Pāṇḍavas, lived a life of asceticism in a
forest retreat and died with yogic calm in a forest fire. Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva and his always
unruly clan slaughtered each other in a drunken brawl thirty-six years after the war,
and Kṛṣṇa's soul dissolved back into the Supreme God Viṣṇu (Kṛṣṇa had been born
when a part of Nārāyaṇa-Viṣṇu took birth in the womb of Kṛṣṇa's mother). When they
learned of this, the Pāṇḍavas believed it time for them to leave this world too and they
embarked upon the 'Great Journey,' which involved walking north toward the polar
mountain, that is toward the heavenly worlds, until one's body dropped dead. One by
one Draupadī and the younger Pāṇḍavas died along the way until Yudhiṣṭhira was left
alone with a dog that had followed him all the way. Yudhiṣṭhira made it to the gate of
heaven and there refused the order to drive the dog back, at which point the dog was
revealed to be an incarnate form of the God Dharma (also known as Yama, the Lord
of the Dead, the God who was Yudhiṣṭhira's actual, physical father), who was there to
test the quality of Yudhiṣṭhira's virtue before admitting him to heaven. Once in heaven
Yudhiṣṭhira faced one final test of his virtue: He saw only the Dhārtarāṣṭras in heaven,
and he was told that his brothers were in hell. He insisted on joining his brothers in
hell, if that be the case. It was then revealed that they were really in heaven, that this
illusion had been one final test for him. So ends the Mahābhārata!